These reflections lead us to the conviction that the Mycenean reliefs must be brought into relation with the ancient architecture of Mycenæ. Let us compare with them only the preserved remnants of the ornamentation of the gateway of the "Treasury of Atreus" and its semi-column, as restored by Professor Donaldson.[205] Therefore it cannot appear an unfounded assumption, if we claim for these ancient monuments the middle of the second millennium B.C., and if we insert them for the future as an important link into the history of art. As Mr. A. S. Murray, of the British Museum, justly observed to me, the spiral ornamentation is no proof whatever of an orientalizing influence, because every wire must have given to the early artist the idea of the spiral ornamentation; nay, we find the spiral ornamentation even on the ancient Mexican and Peruvian monuments. Close to the twelve small reservoirs on the north side of my second trench, is a Cyclopean house without a roof, which even now is on its south side 24 ft. high. It contains only one chamber, 17 ft. long and 9½ ft. broad; its east wall is 3 ft. 4 in., and its west wall 3 ft., thick. On the south side it has two walls, the inner one 3 ft. 4 in., the outer one 3 ft. 8 in., thick; against its north wall, which is 3 ft. thick, leans another, 6½ ft. thick; and thus the passage of the door, which is on this side, is not less than 9½ ft. long. I excavated in this house, and found it filled with ashes both of wood and of animal matter, intermixed with bones, particularly of swine, and with millions of fragments of painted archaic vases. But I found nothing worth mentioning, except a certain quantity of baked wheat and vetches, a weight of jasper with a perforated handle for suspension (No. 155), some well-preserved archaic vases, the fragment (No. 156) of a vase with sieve-like perforations, and a certain number of whorls of blue stone. One of these vases is particularly interesting for its painted ornamentation, showing two swans, which hold their heads together, much like the two eagles in the Russian arms. [Illustration: No. 155. A Jasper Weight, with a hole for suspension. (5½ M.) Actual size.] I have not been more lucky with the twelve small reservoirs formed of four large slabs, for they contain nothing else than the remnants of household utensils, and particularly fragments of archaic vases. The four sculptured and five unsculptured sepulchral slabs undoubtedly mark the sites of tombs cut deep in the rock, the exploration of which, however, I must needs delay until I have terminated all my excavations in the northern part of the Acropolis. [Sidenote: TOMBS IN THE ACROPOLIS.]